The Relation between Hair-Cortisol Concentration and Various Welfare Assessments of Dutch Dairy Farms.

Many protocols have been developed to assess farm animal welfare. However, the validity of these protocols is still subject to debate. The present study aimed to compare nine welfare assessment protocols, namely: (1) Welfare Quality (WQ), (2) a modified version of Welfare Quality (WQ Mod), which has a better discriminative power, (3) WelzijnsWijzer (Welfare Indicator; WW), (4) a new Welfare Monitor (WM), (5) Continue Welzijns Monitor (Continuous Welfare Monitor; CWM), (6) KoeKompas (Cow Compass; KK), (7) Cow Comfort Scoring System (CCSS), (8) Stall Standing Index (SSI) and (9) a Welfare Index (WI Tuyttens).